Electronic ballasts for operating lamps, in particular gas discharge lamps, are usually so configured that they can be employed for the control of different lamp types and can be put to use in different luminaire types. Correspondingly, electronic ballasts are produced in very great numbers and at the end of their production process are installed in a luminaire, so that the mechanism of the luminaire and the electronics, i.e. the electronic ballast, form a unit. During the subsequent production process, the ballast is then programmed with luminaire-specific information, in order through this to adapt the functionality of the ballast to the luminaire type. This programming can for example be effected by burning in of corresponding information into a memory element of the ballast.
By means of the above-described measure of programming it can be ensured that the ballast can be put to use in different luminaires and suitably control different lamp types, but problems can arise from the fact that the working life and reliability of the mechanical elements of the luminaire in part is significantly higher than that of the ballast. In other words, it can indeed occur that in the course of the working life of a luminaire the ballast must be exchanged due to a defect or other manifestations of wear. In this case, however, the information programmed into the original ballast on production, is lost. Also the information programmed-in during the commissioning of the luminaire in the illumination system, for example an operating or group address valid for the illumination system for individual control, and information regarding the permissible operating time of the lighting means, are deleted upon an exchange of the ballast. From U.S. Pat. No. 6,693,397 B1 there is thus for example known a luminaire for employment in endoscopic investigations, in which an exchangeable lamp unit has a data memory for recording the operating time. When, after a predetermined overall operating time, the lamp unit, fixedly connected with the memory, is exchanged, also the memory is necessarily replaced, so that supplementary information held in the memory, which for example relates to the general operation of the luminaire, must be newly written in.
A similar problem to that described above arises in general in the case of so-called building management systems, with which a plurality of so-called actuators, arranged in a distributed manner, are controlled from a central control unit. Under the term actuator there thereby fall both the above-described elements of illumination technology, wherein also emergency light inverters, operating devices for light diodes or halogen lamps are also to be counted, as are also heating, ventilation or climate conditioning elements, and for example blinds for darkening of windows and the like. Such actuators generally have a control device which is constituted for the purpose of receiving control commands from the central control unit of the illumination or general building management system and then to operate the actuator correspondingly in dependence upon these control commands. If these actuators have been to date purely command receivers, which have been controlled from a central computer, in the meantime the tendency in increasing degree is that the actuators themselves manifest a certain intelligence and process certain programs in response to the reception of control commands. Further, increasingly bus systems of various kinds are coupled, mostly in a hierarchical manner in a building. Thus, for example, a central control unit formed by means of a computer can be connected by means of a TCP-IP bus with one or more local control units, which for their part are connected with or communicate with actuators on the basis of another bus system, for example the DALI bus employed in the illumination industry. It is further usual to couple different bus systems with one another via so-called gateways or interface modules.
Through the increase in the local “intelligence” of the actuators, although there is now provided an ever more convenient possibility for control, problems and financial risks for the provider of the actuators, and for the operator of the corresponding building management system, can also arise therefrom. These problems may make themselves noticeable as delays and cost overruns in the necessary first programming of the installation. Beyond this, a subsequent function alteration or extension of the installation is associated with in part very high programming costs. Finally, analogously to the above-indicated case, the exchange of a defective ballast gives rise to the problem that in the case of a device failure and the employment of a corresponding replacement device the originally programmed information is lost and correspondingly a new programming is needed, through which high additional costs arise.
A further problem of these modern actuators consists finally also in that, due to the multiplicity of functions and operating possibilities of these devices, the most varied causes for a possible defect come into question. Thus, a failure of a lamp operating device can for example be due to operation of the light source within a critical operating parameter region; however, it could also simply be the case that the intended operational life of the device or of the light source has in the meantime been exceeded. If now a lamp operating device or in general an actuator in fact fails, it is thus often very difficult to determine the actual cause of the failure and—so far as possible—possibly to take measures to avoid such difficulties in future.